Looking at the Cover

The cover to Amazing Fantasy #15 is one of the most iconic works of art in the comics industry.

The art employs a slightly more subdued colour palette from what we see inside the pages of the book, and while Kibry does a wonderful job realising Ditko’s Spider-Man you can definitely see it’s a Kirby drawing.

The rippling muscles, the heroic pose – it’s quite unlike anything we’re going to see Ditko draw in the coming issues.

For the sake of comparison, I’m going to put the two covers side by side:

You can see that Kirby’s cover has taken Ditko’s and removed some of the ‘business’ of it. It’s no longer street-level, there are fewer people milling about and there’s nothing to distract from the star of the show: Spider-Man.

Kirby’s cover shows the hallmarks of an artist who knows what makes a cover work. It’s sleek, there’s no fluff, and Spider-Man is front and centre with no distractions. There are some clear carry-overs from Ditko’s work, such as the fact he’s carrying someone in the air as well as the faceless nobody’s milling around in the background.

I think these two covers show us why Lee gave the story to Ditko and not to Kirby – Kirby’s Spider-Man is removed from the street-level commonality of the other people. He’s high above us, more akin to Batman than the Spider-Man Ditko and Lee will go on to write in the pages that follow. It’s unquestionably a better cover, but it does lose some of what makes him Spider-Man, which is something that Ditko’s nails.

But let’s look a little closer at the cover that Marvel went with and move on from what they chose to leave behind.

Kirby’s cover has Spider-Man swinging through the air, carrying a character whom I think we can safely assume to be a villain of some sort. In comic books it’s very much ‘judge a book by its cover’ (perhaps literally) and an ugly face usually means an ugly personality. This dude isn’t just ugly, he’s Jekyll and Hyde levels of nasty. So, bad guy? Yeah… I reckon so.

Circling back to the faceless nobody’s from earlier – what are they doing? Why are there so many people on the rooftops? What are they doing? Is Spider-Man taking this man away from this group of people, and if so then why? I’ve just had the rather sobering realisation that none of the people we could ask are still alive – Kirby, Ditko and Lee have all passed on. So we’ll never know what this odd mish-mash of ne’er-do-wells are up to.

Characters Introduced in this Issue

A whole host of important characters make their debut within the pages of this initial issue. You'd be forgiven for expecting a skeleton crew but all of the important ingredients are here from the start:

• Peter Parker
• Uncle Ben
• Aunt May
• Flash Thompson
• The Spider
• Crusher Hogan
• ‘TV producer’
• The Burglar

Plot Summary

Rejected by his peers, Peter Parker attends a science demonstration alone. A spider descends into the path of the rays and becomes irradiated. With its dying breath it passes on its power to Peter.

He stumbles out of the demonstration when he’s nearly hit by a car. He jumps out of its way, sticking to a building in the process. Walking home, he sees an advert for a wrestling match against Crusher Hogan. He beats him easily, at which point he’s approached by a producer who promises to make him a star.

END OF PART ONE

He rushes home and fashions for himself the iconic costume, as well as two webshooters (referred to as ‘this little device’ in-text, strapping one to each arm). He appears on several TV shows proving himself the sensation of the nation.

A burglar rushes past him one night, and he doesn’t stop him. The cop chastises him, pointing out that he could easily have prevented his escape. Upon returning home, Peter is told that his uncle has been murdered and the killer is holed up in an old warehouse.

Spidey rushes to the Acme warehouse and apprehends the crook, quickly realising that it’s the burglar from before. The story ends with Spidey considering the importance of Lee’s parting message: with great power comes great responsibility.

My Thoughts

I’m a bit of a fanboy for Stan Lee.

I know that’s not a very popular position these days, particularly within the Spider-Man fanbase. But it’s true. The guy was essential to my childhood.

I appreciated him on a superficial level as a child (he narrated the levels to the Spider-Man game I had on my PS1) but as an adult I’ve come to appreciate him for another reason:

This man knew how to use words in a way that no one else was using them.

If you’ve got a copy of the story at hand, take a quick look at page 7 in the Marvel Epic Collection. In the original book I believe it’s page 3.

Stan could simply write ‘and there was a Spider and it climbed down and it got irradiated and it bit him and he got powers and he became a superhero thanks for buying the book goodbye’. It’s the last issue. He doesn’t think anyone is going to buy it. He could just phone it in.

Instead, he gives up this fantastic line:

‘A spider whom fate has given a starring, if brief, role to play in the drama we call life’

Come on. That’s lovely. You can’t deny the guy had flair.

This little snide remark about the cha-cha and waltz debacle does lead nicely into my next point though: as much as I love Lee’s writing, it’s impossible to deny it’s dated to a modern reader.

When bitten by the spider Lee has him say ‘why is it burning so?’ on page 7. You know, like everyone would…

Sometimes the dialogue seems like it’s been written by a robot taking a stab at what it thinks people talk like. But that’s just part of reading older comics. You can’t get too hung up on that.

In fact, the dialogue does an awful lot of the heavy lifting in this story – with only a handful of pages to tell a story the dialogue can sometimes be a little on the nose.

‘With dreamboats like Flash around’, says the girl who rejects Peter – why would I go out with you when ‘dreamboats’ like Flash are available? Of course Flash then promptly turns up to tell Peter to go away. It’s not bad, per se – just not exactly subtle.

But then again, it can’t afford to be. They’ve got literally a handful of pages to introduce a new character, tell you what he’s about and give you a reason to want a sequel… I think we can cut them a little slack on this one.

It’s detrimental to the narrative in some places: the time between him getting his powers and deciding to become a wrestler is literal minutes. Lee is very clear that it’s mere minutes between the bite and the ‘I’ll be a wrestler’ idea. But overall it has to be forgiven.

There’s also a distinct lack of spider-like posing from Spidey. Ditko’s drawings in this book seem to lean slightly more towards the Man than the Spider. The classic perched pose Spidey often does won’t be appearing until much later on – long after Ditko’s departure. I don’t believe Romita even draws him like that. I’m not certain when he first starts getting more spider-like in terms of movement but I’m looking forward to us finding out.

Interestingly, the three policemen we see are essentially the same man. One time he has a moustache and another time a different coloured shirt – but he’s got the same face each time. I’m assuming this was simply for Ditko’s convenience and that it’s not supposed to be the same character – but if it is, then he’s a busy man indeed.

There’s also that shot of him confronting the burglar in the warehouse, when he realises who he is. In the original drawing Spidey clearly has pupils visible in his eye lenses, but later editions occasionally edited them out. I’m glad the version printed in my Marvel Epic Collection chose to keep them in, because I think they do well to convey his shock. It’s difficult to imply a facial expression on a guy wearing a full face mask, and yet the master that is Ditko found a way.

Conclusion

This is a work of art. Full stop. It’s astonishing. I was going to go for the obvious ‘Amazing’ pun but veered off at the last second.

Lee and Ditko did a remarkable job constructing the spine of the character in a staggeringly small amount of time and with very limited space.

Everything we know and love about the character is already here. His character is already conveyed so convincingly that should you only read this story and no other, I’d dare say you’d know Spider-Man. You’d know who he is in his core.

Later issues will go on to add depth to the character – to build muscle on the skeleton. Gwen Stacey, Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, Mary Jane… they’re all coming. We’re getting there. As for who he is? That’s all here.

This is an outstanding achievement, especially when considered in light of the fact that they anticipated this being a stand-alone story that no one would read. Truly remarkable.

It’s amazing.